The armor described at the beginning of Hour of the Dragon is lost on the battlefield. However, I found an earlier and very explicit reference to him wearing heavy armor.
"At her command they brought harness to replace Conan's chain-mail - gorget, sollerets, cuirass, pauldrons, jambes, cuisses and sallet. When Yasmela again drew the curtains, a Conan in burnished steel stood before his audience. Clad in the plate-armor, visor lifted and dark face shadowed by black plumes that nodded above his helmet."
The chain-mail being replaced is mentioned covering his knees shortly before this. So he was proficient in medium armor before he became Yasmela's general.
I don't know about training with eastern masters. The Kozaki seem middle eastern and he learns the style of his later horsemanship from them.
Conan uses magic in Beyond the Black River. He writes some words written in the language from when men and beasts spoke the same language to ward off animals that worshiped Jhebbal Sag.
"I saw it carved in the rock of a cave no human had visited for a million years,' muttered Conan, 'in the uninhabited mountains beyond the Sea of Vilayet, half a world away from this spot. Later I saw a black witch-finder of Kush scratch it in the sand of a nameless river. He told me part of its meaning - it's sacred to Jhebbal Sag and the creatures which worship him."
Conan's resistance to magic is described in one of the other stories. Much of the Hyborian Age magic is based on civilization. The weakness created in men by civilizing them renders them weak to those who know how to manipulate the civilizing effect. Since Conan isn't civilized, that sort of low magic does nothing to him. Other forms of magic seem to be based on poisons which Conan is also resistant to simply due to being large and healthy. However, the heavy hitters in the Conan universe are more than capable of harming him with magic. Rules wise, it's more like treating him as a native outsider than a magic resistant human. Maybe the...
The Yasmela thing... that's from A Witch shall be Born, right, or is my memory even wonkier than I fear?
As for the Kozaki, they are not precisely middle eastern: They are Cossacks from the Caspian (sea of Vilayet) Steppes.
Uh what? Samurai? Order of the Hammer (never heard of that one, I must lack the proper splat book, but while the edicts stick, the abilities don't)? training under the " war masters of the east" (where's that from... sounds more like the non canon character from the MIlius movie than the Howard one)? I can't really agree with that.I use to care a lot more about the whole "L. Sprague mangled Howard's legacy" thing than I do now. Aside from Schwarzenegger not being able to act, the Milius movie is a very entertaining romp (and far better than any of the crappy TV shows) that I would wager more people have seen than have read the books, and it's aged quite well, the soundtrack in particular.I fully agree with Conan's ability to sway large groups... I generally translate that by giving him a 18 charisma, but if there are other mechanical ways to do that, I'd like to know what splatbook those are from.As you might very well imagine, he has a very high intimidate score, but I don't know if I'd consider his charisma excessive. I note that it's not enough to forestall the constant treachery-plotting by "friends" behind his back. I figure he's a 14 or so. (If it seems like he has an 18 charisma, it's probably because he's usually standing around a bunch of 7s.)...I don't know about the freebooter archetype (but yeah, it feels good, except the magic at high level), and tend to restrict his ranger levels under lvl4 so he won't have access to spells, even though he DOES use "magic" in Beyond the Black River.The second stacked archetype, Skirmisher, trades out all Ranger spellcasting.
Freebooter is in Pirates of the Inner Sea; Skirmisher in the APG.
...Conan uses magic in Beyond the Black River. He writes some words written in the language from when men and beasts spoke the same language to ward off animals that worshiped Jhebbal Sag.
"I saw it carved in the rock of a cave no
As for the Milius movie, if it had been titled Barney the Barbarian, it would be a masterpiece, as it is, I regard it as a collective turd in the face of all howard fans.
Sorry, but Conana's ability to always end up in leadership positions goes beyond a high Intimidate score, I have to stand on the extraordinary Charisma score... people follow him beyond the bounds of the reasonable, and he seldom has to worry about getting stabbed in the back... that means a degree of respect from his underlings and from ambitious lieutenants that I can ascribe only to charisma.
As for the Milius movie, if it had been titled Barney the Barbarian, it would be a masterpiece, as it is, I regard it as a collective turd in the face of all howard fans.I was reading REH before most "howard fans" alive today...were, and I love the movie. It is a work of art. (You want a real turd? Check out "Hawk the Slayer" or any of the "Beastmaster" sequels. Now those things were god-awful.)
Sorry, but Conana's ability to always end up in leadership positions goes beyond a high Intimidate score, I have to stand on the extraordinary Charisma score... people follow him beyond the bounds of the reasonable, and he seldom has to worry about getting stabbed in the back... that means a degree of respect from his underlings and from ambitious lieutenants that I can ascribe only to charisma.
Conan invariably acquires leaderships positions by killing the men above him (whether that be pirate captain or king of Aquilonia). Granted, the plot will typically set it up so by having that person be an unworthy cur who has it coming, but nonetheless. Additionally, the moment Conan lets his guard down or demonstrate any weakness real or imagined, people are plotting behind his back, and this happens whether he's a the aforementioned pirate captain or the king of Aquilonia. --His position is almost as precarious as an orc horde chieftain ruling purely through intimidation and single-combat.
The Yasmela thing... that's from A Witch shall be Born, right, or is my memory even wonkier than I fear?
As for the Kozaki, they are not precisely middle eastern: They are Cossacks from the Caspian (sea of Vilayet) Steppes.
Yasmela makes Conan her hero in "The Black Colossus". I think it's meant to be pretty early in Conan's career, but I'm not certain.
You're right about the Kozaki, I mixed them up with the Hyrkanians, I'm not sure why but I was under the impression that he'd deliberately mixed a bunch of ethnic groups up the further east he went. All the same, Conan's exposure to "the east" ends there more or less. The idea that he was trained by Khitans is exclusive to the Conan movie, as Khitai is supposed to be mostly wizards and people descended from Yag followers.
ooops... thanks for reminding me, I need to reread the corpus .
I think there was a story where Conan went as far as Vendhya (or was it only Kosala?), but IIRC, The Flame Knife is a De Camp/Carter creation... one of the better ones IMHO.Problem is that I've forgotten where I stowed my 8 volume Lancer edition...
I think there was a story where Conan went as far as Vendhya...
People of the Black Circle by Robert E Howard.
I really need to take those books again... I had to scan them twice to ensure that People of the Black Circle was indeed in my Howard Only edition.